Healthcare services and health research aim to improve the physical and psychosocial well being of consumers, and to offer responsive services needed and valued by them. Research in chronic kidney disease (CKD) has predominantly focused on investigating biomedical aspects and evaluating technological or pharmacological treatment interventions to improve medical management. While research into assessing patients’ and caregivers’ quality of life, and symptom burden, is growing minimal attention has been given to gaining a broad and in-depth understanding about the experiences, psychosocial issues and needs of patients and their caregivers. These need to be considered when planning and delivering patient-centred care and health research across the whole trajectory of CKD.
The studies that form the major part of this thesis explore the perspectives, needs and experiences of CKD patients and their caregivers, within a broad and multidimensional framework encompassing aspects of the nature of the health and illness experiences and consumer perspectives.
In Chapter 2, to understand what is known about parental experiences of caring for a child with CKD, the relevant qualitative literature was systematically reviewed and synthesized. Three inter-related clusters were identified: intrapersonal, interpersonal and external experiences. In Chapter 3, to gain a more detailed and broader understanding of this topic, in-depth interviews were conducted with parents of 20 children with CKD and 4 major themes were identified: absorbing the clinical environment, medicalising parenting, disrupting family norms, and coping strategies and support structures. In Chapter 4, to assess the effectiveness of support interventions for caregivers of patients with CKD, a systematic review was conducted which identified only three eligible studies that assessed only the effect of educational material on caregiver knowledge, not other domains.
In Chapter 5, to describe and compare the broad range and depth of experiences and perspectives from predialysis, dialysis and transplantation patients, data from patient focus groups were analysed. The 5 themes that emerged from this data were: personal meaning of CKD, managing and monitoring health, lifestyle consequences, family impact, and informal structures. In Chapter 6, the focus groups were also used to elicit research priorities and identify reasons that patients used to develop their research priorities. A patient focused research agenda was elicited for CKD and 5 reasons that patients used to develop their research priorities were identified: normalisation of life, altruism, economic efficiency, personal concerns and clinical outcomes. During the focus groups, participants repeatedly expressed frustration about the poor public profile, and lack of community-based information on CKD prevention. So in Chapter 7, to assess how Australian news media covered prevention and early detection of CKD, I analysed television and newspaper stories that referred to CKD prevention or early detection. Kidney disease in general, and particularly the prevention and early detection of CKD, received virtually no media attention. When mentioned, it was mainly in the context of transplantation and donor stories, and seldom prevention or early detection, which appears largely unnewsworthy in its current form. At best, CKD received peripheral mention as a secondary concern in diabetes and obesity news stories which focused on lifestyle solutions.
In Chapter 8, to develop a checklist for explicit and comprehensive reporting of qualitative studies (in-depth interviews and focus groups), I performed a comprehensive search in relevant publications for existing checklists used to assess qualitative studies. Seventy-six items from 22 checklists were compiled into a comprehensive list. All items were grouped into three domains: 1) research team and reflexivity, 2) study design, and 3) data analysis and reporting.
The overarching purpose of these studies was to gain a better understanding about the needs, experiences and perspectives of CKD patients and their caregivers. The findings describe the permanent, profound and pervasive impact of CKD on the lives of patients and caregivers across the whole illness trajectory. A more detailed and broader understanding about patient and caregiver perspectives, as presented in this thesis, can support a move towards advancing patient-centred healthcare and research in CKD.

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